So one of the characters has a secret, one that they do not want leaking out. Unfortunately, Clark Kenting doesn't always cut it, and some aspect of the secret is going to be glaringly obvious no matter what. So they have to come up with an excuse for their situation, and tell a lie.

Similar to A Wizard Did It, but instead of hand-waving some implausible aspect of the series, the character is the one doing the hand-waving to another character.

FBI Agent Burke:[pointing at Fi's gun] Do you have a permit for that weapon? Fi:[covers it with a napkin] What weapon? Agent Burke: That's a gun. Michael: That's a napkin. Agent Burke: I can literally see it. Fi: Oh, that's my cellphone. Agent Burke:[points to the cell phone in her hand] Then what's that? Fi: That's my other cell phone. Michael: She's a...big talker? Fi:[covering the napkin with her purse; a grenade falls out] Maybe we could just put this all...behind...us. Agent Burke:[deadpan] Is that a grenade? Fi: What grenade?

The Enzyte commercials with "Smilin' Bob" —the clear implication that "enhancement" means size, while the actual product is meant to increase endurance. This got to the point that someone actually filed a lawsuit claiming false advertising.

Played for Laughs by Capri Sun: "Because one day aliens will come. And they will assume the one drinking the out of the most space-agey container is our leader."

UK advertising for Rice Krispie Squares claims (among other things) that if you buy two you get a free boat, that the Rocky Road flavor is made from actual rocks, and that the adverts let you taste them through electrochemical impulses, before ending with the tagline "It's all lies! They're not even square!"

Subverted in a classic Silver Age comic which ends with Iris wondering aloud about the timing of Barry's absences. Without missing a beat, Barry just tells her she's right: "One and one still makes one! I'm the Flash!" Naturally, this flippant claim convinces Iris he's not.

Iris does end up being subjected to Blatant Lies. Iris learns Barry's identity because he talks in his sleep but he doesn't end up telling her for another year. This obviously bothers her a bit. Justified in a retcon because Barry isn't sure if he's still human and wants to determine if he and Iris can have children before breaking the news to her.

In Demon Spawn, Linda Danvers -alias Kara Zor-El, Supergirl- is so fed up of putting up with her co-worker 'Nasty''s bullying that she punches a wall, which makes people wondering if a plane just crashed into the building. When her boss Geoff inquires what happened and what was that loud boom coming from her office, Linda replies "Oh, nothing!". Of course, he doesn't believe her.

In American Flagg!, the U.S. government relocates to Mars. "Temporarily, of course".

A common fight example is a character promising their opponent "one free shot", then attacking while they prepare.

Oddly enough, one issue of Captain America has an instance where Cap does give the villain their "one free shot", who then knocks Cap down with the free shot. Though Cap would then kick the villain's ass handily soon after.

Spider-Man's enemy the Jackal during The Clone Saga. Eventually, it got to the point that you could count on what he said to be lies. This is even lampshaded by the Jackal himself when he assaults Shriek in order to take the Carrion Virus from her:

Jackal: I'd tell you this wouldn't hurt... But that's only because I'm a notorious liar...

In MAD, this is often used for humorous effect. For example, Richard Nixon is once shown as a young George Washington, standing near the cherry tree that he cut down, holding an axe behind his back and saying, "I cannot tell a lie! I DIDN'T DO IT!!"

In The Pulse, Norman Osborn's lawyer tries to pin the near-death of an entire group of NYPD officers and civilians on Spider-Man.

In Better Angels, Shane lies to the Atlanta survivors about Rick's death saying that Rick had been bitten and needed to be put down. This is consistent with Shane's duplicitous nature in The Walking Dead when he lies about leaving Otis for dead and killing Randall.

Goku: So Vegeta, what happened to you? Did you get beat up by this guy? [talking about Recoome]Recoome: [groaning in pain]Vegeta: [stammering] Uhhh no...I..umm...uh.. Ghost Nappa: You fell down some stairs. Vegeta: I fell down some stairs. Krillin: No you didn't, you— Vegeta: Shut up before I throw you down a flight!

In Hellsing Ultimate Abridged when Pip asks Seras about her childhood she has a flashback of her parents being murdered and the murderers raping her mother's corpse.

Boy, does Bhelen ever try to feed the dwarven commoner a slice of bull_hit the size of a mountain in Dragon Age: The Crown of Thorns. Hilariously enough, Faren was actually playing dumb on behalf of the dwarven noble protagonist.

This is a common tactic of Harry's, usually when a Sarcastic Confession just won't cut it. His favorite answer to "How do you know that?" is "My psychic scar told me."

Subverted in one instance:

Molly: This is much better gossip than last year's 'Albus Dumbledore was madly in love with Gellert Grindelwald.' Honestly, you'd think Rita Skeeter would learn to stop making up such sensational stories. Obviously Dumbledore was struck speechless by the lies and thus couldn't be bothered to deny it.

Altair: It's a trap. Isra: [sarcastic] I hadn't noticed. Altair: You can't go, [...] they'll be waiting for you. Isra: Good for them. Altair: This is serious, and you're being flippant! Isra: Oh, perish the thought!

In Children Of The Stars there is this exchange between the two leads that hints at the established UST being mutual.

Keleria: Well would you rather hang onto me or the gryphon? [beat]Keleria: Well? Ayuri: The gryphon. What else would I hang on to.

In The Dilgar War, warmaster Len'char is sent to Earth space to try and stipulate a non-aggression treaty. The description in his journal of the first meeting with Earth ambassadors and their escort as 'subduing them with his commanding aura' and of the 'million sighs' of relief they produced when he informed them of coming in peace and not in conquest drew a lot of laughs from the ambassadors and the intelligence analysts who spied it.

Used numerous times in the essay-fic, Equestria: A History Revealed, in which the narrator purposefully miscites sources, and her "proof" for her ridiculously implausible theories.

At one point, she outright admits that most of the stuff in her essay was made up as she goes along. She unfortunately doesn't see the problem in this.

In The Many Secret Origins Of Scootaloo, Pinkie Pie tries to convince Twilight Sparkle that Scootaloo fights crime as The Mysterious Mare-Do-Well, but Twilight protests that they both, as well as Fluttershy and Applejack, invented the MMDW themselves and donned the costume as a prior scheme. And also, she can clearly see Pinkie's costume hanging out of a closet over there. Pinkie Pie insists that she's mistaken.

At the end of With Strings Attached, Shag and Varx tell the four that they had been brought to C'hou to restore the Vasyn, and that they themselves are members of an alien do-gooder race but are unable to intervene themselves. The four accept this, but the reader has known all along that they were initially brought over as subjects in an undergraduate psychology experiment, and everything the two aliens said was a complete lie. In part two of the Epilogue, Shag is ashamed to have lied so blatantly to the four, but Varx points out they almost certainly wouldn't have reacted well to the truth:

+How else were we gonna explain everything? 'Oh, the only reason you went through all that was that we all got suckered into the quest by our idiot gamer partner who co-opted you after we got kicked off our psych experiment because we screwed around with you.' They would've loved that.+

The absolute INSANITY that is the Harry Potter fanfic Thirty Hs has this. The fic is marked as Angst/Romance between Bellatrix Lestrange & Seamus Finnegan. They don't appear once.

In the Saki doujin, Kazekoshi Buchou Monogatari, Mihoko, after seeing Kana get a poke in the forehead from Hisa (who is attending Kazekoshi in this doujin) for getting in last place due to playing into someone else's hand, gets slightly jealous and wants Hisa to touch her in such a way. She then opens her right eye, throws the game, and comments how "everyone has gotten stronger", while Miharu mentally notes that "Captain is so transparent". It's unclear whether Hisa, who kisses Mihoko on the forehead instead is fooled or if she merely doesn't care, although the latter is more likely.

In Saki After Story, the phrase is used verbatim to describe Teru refusing to admit that Saki is her sister, even to Sumire, who knows the truth.

In Table Top Adventures, an obstructive horse-breeder refuses to sell mounts to the party. This prompts Pyrrha to roll for intimidation and whisper in the Game Master's ear. When she's done, he looks afraid, and the NPC gives them the horses and supplies into the bargain.

Jaune: Wow, Pyrrha. What did you say to her?

Pyrrha: I only said 'please'.

In the Star Trek: The Original Series fanfic Insontis, Spock alleges that his letting McCoy and baby!Kirk sleep cuddled together for another few minutes was "entirely due to their need for sleep", not because it's "adorable."

"Last Rights": When Senior Chief Athezra Darrod is hit by Vaadwaur shrapnel he asks Captain Kanril Eleya how bad it is. She tells him it's just a flesh wound before yelling for the medic. He has four compound fractures of the ribcage and an obvious sucking chest wound, and dies less than a minute later.

In Four Deadly Secrets, Ruby tells several, and shocks people by her ability to do it with a pure, honest and innocent face.

Not Music

The Irish folk song Seven Drunken Nights[1] Contains increasingly blatant lies from the singer's wife, when he comes home late and suspects she's been cheating: She tells him that the coat "where [his] own coat ought to be" is a blanket, for instance. He isn't entirely convinced ("A blanket with brass buttons, I've never seen before!")

The Rasputina song "Our Lies" exemplifies this trope, with the singer variously claiming that she was never conceived, the bones in her face weren't there all along and that she loves your coffee cake.

Shaggy's song "It Wasn't Me", about a man caught in flagrante delicto by his girlfriend, has a Blatant Lie as its title. The advice given is lie blatantly; just issue a flat denial ignoring any evidence to the contrary:

"But she caught me on the counter." "It wasn't me." "Saw me bangin' on the sofa." "It wasn't me." "I even had her in the shower." "It wasn't me." "She even caught me on camera." "It wasn't me." "She saw the marks on my shoulder." "It wasn't me." "Heard the words that I told her." "It wasn't me." "Heard the scream get louder." "It wasn't me." "She stayed until it was over."

Louis Jordan's 1940s song "Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens" has a bunch of people trespassing on a farmer's land, and when the farmer hears them and shouts "Who's there?" they reply with the title of the song.

Another '40s hit, Glenn Miller's "Five O'Clock Whistle", has a youngster relating how her father didn't come home the night before, because (he claimed) the titular whistle was broken.

You ought to hear what my mommy said When papa came home and sneaked into bed And told her he'd worked 'til half past two 'Cause the five o'clock whistle never blew

Jonathan Coulton's song "Not About You" is all about how the singer is not thinking about his ex-girlfriend, does not miss her and is certainly not singing about her.

In George Strait's song "Ocean Front Property", the singer tells his girlfriend that he won't miss her if she leaves, that he doesn't love her... and that he owns the title's "ocean-front property" in Arizona — from his front porch you can see the ssea.

In South Korean boy band BEAST's song "Shock", member Junhyung says "This song is not over!". Then the song ends.

"Darling dear, what have you done? Your hands and face are smeared with blood." "The chaplain came and called me out To bleed and to butcher his mother's sow." "But darling dear, they found him dead This morning on the riverbed."

"Weird Al" Yankovic's "I Was Only Kidding: all those times he professed his love for his girl, he was only kidding. She doesn't take it well.

Silverchair did not take their name from a misspelled portmanteau of Nirvana's "Sliver" and You Am I's "Berlin Chair". After several years they finally admitted to having completely made up that story. Originally called Innocent Criminals, they allegedly were given the name Silverchair by one of the administrators of the Pick Me competition, which they won. It's unknown why they lied about it, but it might be because they didn't like the fact that the name was imposed upon them and/or they feared its Narnia origins might undermine their early alternarock sound (it was a better fit with their later albums).

Pavement used to tell outrageous lies in their early interviews. Stephen Malkmus claimed that they were invited to play at the "Peach Pit" for an episode of Beverly Hills 90210 (not as far fetched as it might seem, as Flaming Lips really did make such an appearance), but got into a fist fight with Jason Priestley.

Henry Rollins' "Liar". It's a song expressly about using this trope to pick up women.

I can't believe I ever hurt you, I swear I will never lie to you again, please Just give me one more chance, I'll never lie to you again, no, I swear, I will never tell a lie, I will never tell a lie, no, no Ha ha ha ha ha, ho ho ho! Sucker! Sucker! Ooooh sucker!

I don't know what you've got against me I'm just a girl from a small town in Canada There's no phones there

Whitehouse's infamous song You Don't Have To Say Please, which is narrated from the point of view of a rapist, includes the line "I'd never hurt you babe", in the middle of him forcing a woman to perform fellatio on him.

"Everything Right Is Wrong Again" by They Might Be Giants contains a line repeatedly stating "and now the song is over now"...right before the bridge.

Alanis Morisette's fiercely resentful breakup song "You Oughta Know", where she rages against her ex and his new girlfriend, begins with the following blatant lie:

I want you to know that I'm happy for you I wish nothing but the best for you both.

The Capitol Steps have a stock parody of the "The Boxer" by Simon & Garfunkel, where a reporter asks various questions of some political figure currently caught in a scandal, and the political figure invariably replies: "Lie-lie-lie, lie-lie-lie-lie-lie-lie..."

10cc's "I'm Not in Love", in which the "not" is (intentionally) a thin bit of denial.

Dilbert: Why have you ignored my request, Ted? Co-worker: I was killed by a squadron of giant military squirrels. Wally: He doesn't respect you enough to tell a plausible lie. Dilbert: I demand a plausible lie! Co-worker: Okay, maybe I wasn't killed by giant military squirrels. But I was imprisoned in their secret lair at the center of the earth. Wally: You can't prove that one either way. Dilbert: He did say it was a "secret" lair.

One of Dogbert's favorite hobbies and/or lucrative careers is to tell ridiculously obvious lies to idiots, usually so he can take their money.

Calvin frequently makes up outlandish excuses when caught in the act, such as blaming a mess he made on "a Venusian that materialized in the kitchen". One of the former image caption's quotes comes from after he threw a snowball at Susie.

Calvin's dad is really no better, as the following example shows:

Calvin: Dad, were there dinosaurs when you were a kid? Dad: Sure! Your grandfather and I used to put on leopard skins and brontosaurus for all the clan rituals. Mom(after Calvin has left): Listen, buster, I think Calvin's grades are bad enough, don't you?

Or this example:

Calvin: Dad, where do babies come from? Dad: Most people go to Sears, buy the kit, then follow the assembly instructions. Calvin: I came from SEARS?!? Dad: No, you were a Blue-light Special from K-Mart; almost as good and a whole lot cheaper.

His dad's best - as in funniest - lie was likely the time he told Calvin that when you become a father, you get a book that explains everything in the world:

Calvin: Can I see it? Dad: Nope, sorry. Calvin: Why not?! Dad: It tells what it's like to raise a kid. Calvin: SO? Dad: You're not allowed to know that until it's too late not to have one.

Calvin decides to cheat on a math test by asking Susie for answers, but when she tells him 12 + 7 is "a billion," even the math-impaired Calvin senses something is up: "That's what she said 3 + 4 was."

Whenever Calvin asks if there are any monsters hiding under his bed, voices from under his bed will reply that of course there aren't. One strip uses this in tandem with I Lied:

Dressed in full stereotypical Native American garb, Calvin shoots a suction-cup arrow at Susie. When she confronts him and asks "is this yours?", his response is "No. What is it?" Keep in mind, he's still holding the bow at this point. She doesn't buy it.

This is a game mechanic in Fish Tales - upon catching a fish, you can shoot a shot to "Stretch the Truth" and gain more points, but you can also tell a "total lie" that voids all points the fish would've gotten you.

Not Professional Wrestling

Calling the WWE a bunch of liars is pointless because the fights are all scripted and the outcomes are determined. However, they've lied in a few other ways a few times that fans didn't appreciate as much:

John Cena never gives up. Both he and the WWE make that claim all the time, because well, full-blooded American heroes like the type he's supposed to be never give up. Problem is, he has given up, three times, to Kurt Angle in No Mercy in 2003 and No Way Out 2004, and to Chris Benoit in Smackdown 2003. And the WWE definitely doesn't want to talk about that one. Speaking of which...

Possibly a lie by admission, but still uncomfortable. Chris Benoit's suicide after murdering his family has caused the WWE to swear never to speak of him again, and as a result, have erased his role in every previous storyline via Retcon and disabled the ability to search for his matches on their website, pretending they didn't happen. Whether you agree with this policy or not, it remains one of their biggest and most blatant deceptions.

The whole mess with Steve Austin in Survivor Series 99. During that storyline, Austin was hit by a car driven by Rikishi(oddly enough), and as a result, had to sit out the Triple Threat main event, and was replaced by The Big Show at the last minute. Fair enough, but the trouble is, this fake injury was made to cover up a real one, which was the actual reason he couldn't participate in the event. His neck had been hurt since Summer Slam 1997, and the problem was flaring up again; he needed surgery and likely wouldn't be wrestling for a year. The WWE knew that, but had booked him for the main event of Survivor Series that year, promoting an event they knew he'd never be able to make (driving up sales, naturally, as fans tend to pay more for a match with the star) and using the phony story to excuse it. This wasn't technically false advertising, but it wasn't exactly "true advertising" either.

WrestleMania III's attendance was 93,173, a record attendance that would endure for 20 years, or rather it would have if it wasn't a boldfaced lie. Various sources have claimed the actual number was closer to 80,000, and possibly as low as 78,000.

They may be big on Fanservice with their Divas, but actual nudity has always been against their policy, aside from a few "accidents". Nonetheless, when the rebooted episodes of ECW started to tank badly, they promised an all-Diva game of Strip Poker. Now, it's unlikely most fans expected them to follow through (this was basic cable, after all) and they did not; they pixelated the Divas' "nudity", which was actually them with flesh-colored underwear.

When they set up the unification match for the WWE heavyweight titles in TLC 2013, one inscription on the engraved belt was the indication of a title that went back a hundred years - problem is, it doesn't. In truth, the WCW heavyweight title (previously the NWA title), which does indeed go back that long, was retired in 2001 when it was unified with the WWE titles. The belt at the event looked similar to the older one, but was only marking an eleven-year-old event; makes a better story, though.* The NWA Title was very much still active, with WCW and WWE's activity being Canon Discontinuity to it

Usually a Loser Leaves Town match has a "three month rule" in the WWE (as in, three months is the longest the winner can demand the loser leave for) but in the case of John Cena during his long feud with rookie wrestlers The Nexus, it was implied at first it would be permanent. Here's how it went down. After losing during a Hell in a Cell, Cena was forced to join Nexus, and two months later in Survivor Series 2010, Nexus leader Wade Barrett told him if he didn't leave as champion, he was fired. Well, the event was publicized with emotional retrospectives and documentaries about Cena's career, and after he did lose, he gave a long, long tearful goodbye the next night on Raw. Thing is, he didn't even stay away three months, he came back in a week, beating the ever-living crud out of Nexus members until they reinstated him, seemingly cheapening the whole thing.

Mick Foley did something similar at No Way Out 2000, putting his career on the line against Triple H in a Hell in a Cell match, losing in a brutal fight and claiming he was leaving forever. Well, he stayed away longer than Cena did (three weeks this time) but came back in the very next Pay-Per-View event. Since then, he wrestled in 2003, 2006, 2008, well, you get the idea.

Even worse than that is when they claim that somebody who actually did retire is supposedly coming back. Bret Hart retired for good in 2000, due to concussions and a stroke later, and it's unlikely (well, impossible, as given his injuries, he's uninsurable and can't be legally cleared to wrestle) he'll ever be cleared to do so again. In 2010, however, he's been advertised as making a return as a wrestler several times in guest matches that were obvious farces.

"Once in a Lifetime!" For a full year, the WWE shoved that phrase down fans' throats while promoting the match between John Cena (again) and The Rock, for the main event of WrestleMania XXVIII, claiming it was an event that could only, should only, would only happen "Once in a Lifetime!". With such insistence that it was a "Once in a Lifetime!" event over and over, one would expect it to actually BE "Once in a Lifetime!" But it was not. It happened again the next year, and the WWE knew it would from the start. The Rock said in an interview he had been signed to three WrestleMania matches, the first costing him the title, the second a rematch with Cena, the third a rematch with the title on the line. Maybe the phrase "Twice in a Lifetime" just isn't catchy enough, so they decided "Who cares? Everyone will pay to watch it anyway!"

Even within the framework of Kayfabe, announcers have at times been required to make completely false, unrealistic and utterly not believable statements. A good example of this can be found during the Giant Gonzales vs. Jim Powers match on the March 14 (taped January 26), 1993 episode of WWF All American Wrestling. Announcer Rob Bartlett had to say, with a completely straight face, that Powers was looking to work his way back to the top of the World Wrestling Federation. Powers was NEVER at the top, was NEVER even close to the top, and was NEVER going to get there.

Heels often do this by claiming they won matches singlehandedly when there was actually plenty of interference, the fans are all cheering for them, or they are just at ringside at the same time as their enemy to commentate.

CM Punk has only lost to Chris Hero once, when Punk had a 108 degree fever and the gout.

Triple H and Stephanie McMahon, as the leaders of The Authority since 2013, have claimed that all of their actions are best for business. Apparently screwing over Daniel Bryan at every turn, threatening to fire anyone who tried to aid him, orchestrating the breakup of major stables, and firing employeeswhoaidedJohn Cena in trying to take them out of power are all good business decisions. At least during the McMahon-Helmsley Era in 2000, also led by the two, they openly admitted to screwing people over intentionally and only covered it up when they were backed into a corner.

Not Stand-Up Comedy

Bill Cosbyplays this for laughs in his famous "To My Brother Russell, Whom I Slept With" routine. Bill and Russell constantly misbehave in the middle of the night, which their father always catches them doing. At first, they deny that all of the crying and screaming is them, but this veers more and more into Implausible Deniability when the two of them break the bed and soak each other in water. They blame "some man" who climbed into their window just to break their bed and throw water on them. Their father gets more and more fed up with this as the routine goes on, finally culminating in him forcing the two boys to stand up all night.

Cosby did a routine about when he had his tonsils out as a kid - the doctor is trying to put him at ease, eventually telling him "When they cut your tonsils out, don't you know...are you ready for the lie?...they'll give you all the ice cream in the world that you can eat."

From John Mulaney: "And Jake asked me, 'Dude, were you at my party last night?' And I said: 'No.' You know, like a liar!"

Not Tabletop Games

Warhammer 40,000. The Imperial Truth: "There are no supernatural things or gods." Yeah, sure... The Imperium is practically BUILT on blatant lies. Take the time to read The Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer, and it'll all be made clear.

The Emperor's plan was to make it true, but he never quite got that far. In the Horus Heresy series, all myths are considered false by the Imperium, and while the warp is known to be dangerous, daemons are not known to exist. Key figures in the Imperium are granted the secret knowledge that the warp sometimes spits out unintelligent energies that look like creatures and can do bad things. Not even Horus knew about the Chaos Gods, let alone that daemons could work together or even think. This kind of caused problems.

In the RPG Spycraft, a 10th level Faceman has the ability to tell one bald-faced lie that can't immediately be proven false and must be believed. "The sky is purple" is legitimate as long as they aren't outside or near a window.

In In Nomine, Balseraphs (fallen Seraphim) have the power to make people believe any lie they speak. They suffer for it if they themselves actively disprove the lie (such as saying "I won't shave your head" and then doing just that) but other than that, they're consummate liesmiths. Their angelic counterparts, on the other hand, can recognize any lie spoken, so they don't get along too well...

So in the example given, the Balseraph would be perfectly okay if he scalped his victim. After all, he didn't shave him/her.

In Nobilis first and second editions, the same concept goes even further. An Excrucian Deceiver (a type of monster Mole) can tell one person a Blind Lie. While they don't have to believe it, they become incapable of perceiving any contradictory evidence. No. Matter. What. If the lie is "I won't hurt you." and then he starts smashing the victim in the face with a war mace? The victim will neither see nor feel it.

Players can pull this off too with the correct Estate.

In Unknown Armies many different magic styles have ways of getting people to believe anything. An avatar of the Demagogue can convince anyone by talking to them for a while, a cliomancer (history mage) can make a person think they "heard it somewhere before", etc.

Epic level characters in Dungeons & Dragons can gain enough ranks in certain skills that it's possible to mimic the effects of magical compulsion just by talking to someone. A rogue can theoretically make up anything and be believed. Bards, with the Glibness spell, are capable of pulling this off before they've even approached that point.

Never seen it in person, but supposedly with enough bonuses, a rogue can tell the reigning monarch that they are fakes and that the rogue is the true ruler, misplaced at birth, and they are reliable because they are also the moon. "I am the Moon" has become local idiom for the brokenness of bluff and similar skills.

Even without epic levels, in D&D 3.5 a specialist can do things which seem impossible. A nineteenth-level Half-Elven diplomat using skill synergy, feats, and equipment can talk a person from fighting mad to best friend in the middle of a fight. And that's without using some of the prestige classes which are available.

Old Half-elf Binder 1/Marshal 1. Bind Naberius, take the Motivate Charisma aura, have a Charisma of 20 thanks to age effects, full ranks in Diplomacy, a Synergy skill, take Negotiator at 1st level and find a magic item that boosts your Diplomacy check by 1 or more. You can talk someone from "actively trying to kill you" to "would put in a good word for you" as a standard action with no chance of failure. You need to be a bit higher to persuade someone to switch sides mid-battle, but you can end fights automatically from a very early point.

Incarnate (for the Silvertongue Mask soulmeld) and Warlock (for the Beguiling Influence invocation) are also good one-level dips for a diplomat. And as long as the character is a half-elf, the first Bard substitution level is useful as well.

Gary Gygax pulled this with the spell Word of Recall. In the Player's Handbook, it says that the spell, which is meant to work as an emergency escape from trouble, is "infallibly safe." When you read the description in the Dungeon Master's Guide...

Word Of Recall: For each plane that the cleric is removed from the plane of his or her designated Sanctuary, there is a 10% cumulative chance that the cleric will be irrevocably lost in the intervening astral or ethereal spaces.

In Scion, characters with divine Manipulation abilities can function as both consummate liars and lie-detectors.

If you tell a mortal a lie using a particular ability, the only way for them to be convinced otherwise is to be presented with direct contradictory evidence. If you use it to tell the truth, no force on Earth can make them doubt you.

There's also a meta example in the White Veil Society, whose entire writeup is composed of Suspiciously Specific Denials, followed by the Martial Arts Style "they most certainly would not practice, if they existed."

Paranoia. "The Computer is your friend! Any claim that this is merely the tip of the iceberg is treason."

In the board game Dungeon Petz, if a baby monster isn't sold before it matures, it is discarded from play. The rulebook states that it is released to live happily on a farm...and tells you to add an extra meat resource to the market whenever this happens. For some strange reason.

An optional rule takes this even further, so that discarding the carnivorous plant provides a bonus vegetable, discarding the golem provides a bonus gold, and discarding the ghost provides nothing. And then restates that there is no thematic reason for this rule. Nope. Definitely not.

Blood Bowl has "hidden weapon" as a skill for some players. These include chainsaws, bombs, ball and chains bigger than the goblin wielding it, and steamrollers.

Legend of the Five Rings has no ninjas. None at all. It's certainly not a whole character class available to PCs and NPCs alike. There certainly aren't entire families that specialise in it, and even if they did, they certainly wouldn't run the equivalent of the intelligence service.

Not Theater

Jake's song from Evil Dead: The Musical. He claims to be a pro basketball player, to have won an Oscar for directing Platoon, to have written Jackie Chan's autobiography, and to have created the phrase "fo' shizzle, my nizzle!"

Louisiana Purchase has a song explaining how the show is not a thinly veiled satire of a certain politician, but a work of utter fiction, set in New Orleans, "a city we've invented so that there would be no fuss./If there is such a place/It's certainly news to us."

Serves as the basis of Ray Cooney's farce, Tom, Dick and Harry

In Little Shop of Horrors, Seymour claims that Mushnik is visiting his sister in Czechoslovakia, when in reality Seymour killed Mushnik.

Utopia Limited: Nearly anything that the Flowers of Progress, and to a lesser degree Lady Sophy, say about England.

Quoth one of the murderers in Chicago's song, "Cell Block Tango": "He ran into my knife! He ran into my knife TEN TIMES!"

At the end of Alexander Pushkin's Boris Godunov Mosalskiy with the soldiers enters Godunov's house. Then the sound of fighting and woman's scream are heard. Then Mosalskiy returns and proclaims to the shocked crowd that Godunov's widow and son poisoned themselves and died before his visit...

Henrik Ibsen has Peer Gynt, who lies all the time. Then there is a crucial moment in Brand, where Brand has managed to get an entire parish up to the mountain in an attempt to make a rebel army of them. The main antagonist, the local Bailiff, cooks up a story of a school of fish steaming into the fjord, that eventually will make everyone rich, if they only come back down again. All of them go Heel–Face Turn in seconds, leaving Brand alone.

Mark Antony's speech in Act III, scene II of Shakespeare'sJulius Caesar. First telling the crowd "I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him", he then proceeds to praise Caesar and turn his audience into an angry mob.

In Starting Here, Starting Now, the singer of "I Don't Remember Christmas" goes on to sing about all the special occasions and memories he definitely doesn't remember.

Not Web Animation

Inanimate Insanity II: "Hey guys! I'd just like to let you all know that I didn't steal anything!" Right after Suitcase stole a MePhone4 battery.

That Guy with the Glasses' MikeJ is constantly spewing "facts" about Briton. For instance, did you know that all the homosexual people were banished to Norway in the 1800s? Or that goats are the dominant species? 87 foot ring tailed lemurs run amok, and they have the Running of the Praying Mantis which happens every week.

Awkward. has Alex, who will say anything if it gets him a little closer to target-of-his-affections Lester.

Alex: [while following a half-naked Lester around the kitchen with a video camera] Makin' a video. For school. Yeah, it's a documentary about, um... kitchen life.

Stories on Pseudopod are usually introduced with "I have a story for you, and I promise you, it's true." (For context, Pseudopod is a horror Genre Anthology with regular forays into the supernatural and the surreal.)

The blogger Chromagic does this all the time. For example, "And, you know, [Sandslash has] huge long talons. Also like me."

Ranger in Comic Fury Werewolf during Game 11 had an exchange seen as either hilarious or quite frustrating in Game 11, where he claimed, "I'm not a wolf!" After he was dead. And confirmed by the host.

Also several variations involving a cat sitting in the middle of a gigantic mess with a caption declaring something along the lines of "What? I had nothing to do with it!" Cat (and dog) owners know full well how much this is Truth in Television.

The characters in Dead Ends have the option of doing this a few times. It gets them killed.

Tobuscus' Lazy Vlogs contain a rather large amount of pointless rambling — that is the point. However, when Toby gets to rambling, he often launches into some... rather obvious untruths. In this vlog he claims to have a lying tell, and then claims to be lying about said tell.

YouTube videos have a "Top Comments" section, wherein the comments given the most thumbs-up are enshrined. Except, looking through any given video's comments will often reveal ones with dozens more positive ratings than whatever the actual video page considers top-rated — apparently "top" means "less than 50 ratings" on YouTube.

Report: It is determined that this is the point where Dr. Clef accidentally fell out of his chair and struck his head nine times against the corner of the desk, fracturing his skull and snapping his neck between the second and third vertebrae.

Played with in Happy Tree Friends: The episode description for Happy Trails, pt. 1 is "Is this really the end of the invulnerable Happy Tree Friends?". It's never specified whether the invulnerability refers to their ability to stay alive (which would make it an obvious lie) or coming back after every episode.

Light:[to Ryuk] No one is listening to you, Ryuk. Sayu: What does Ryuk mean? Light: Uh, It's my new name for you. It means Ke$ha in Japanese.

Welcome to Night Vale: The titular town is riddled with conspiracy theories come true, resulting in a lot of hasty coverups that don't even try for credibility. Cecil, the news announcer for the local public radio station, can usually keep any disbelief he may or may not feel out of his voice, with two notable exceptions: when the City Council tries to pass off the feral dog pack menacing town as plastic bags blowing in the wind, and when the Mega Corp. that owns the neighbouring town buys the radio station and is feeding him lines under duress.

In the Bad Call TV episode "Up in Smoke," the spokesman for Premiere Smokeless Cigarettes says that they are "100% safe, 100% clean, and make no compromises on taste." As it turns out, they have a disgusting charcoal aftertaste, resulting in the spokesman taking a Vomit Discretion Shot. Sadly, this is based on a Real Life advertising campaign that went horribly wrong.

In the middle of the same review, he does a slight commercial break advertising a card game. We then cut to an actor who is not very enthusiastic about his opinion, and the bottom of the screen has a caption saying "NOT A PAID ACTOR".

At the end of his review of The Legend of Zelda I, he tells the viewers to buy his DVD, which is "not rushed at all". The cover art is a terrible drawing made in crayon, and the lines of a sheet of paper are visible.

He claims his review of Castlevania II: Simon's Quest is original, but the gameplay footage is from the AVGN's review with the original sound running in the background.

In his The Lion King review, he tells the viewers to see how slow Simba is running "in this unedited footage", said as he then abruptly slows down the footage.

In Sooper Appisote 3 of Da Amazin OT Advenchr, the place called “Not Microsoft Land” that contains signs pointing to a room where Bill Gates is. Guess what’s written on the signs? “Not Where Bill Gates Is”!

In Why Lying is OK!, Hugo eats the cat, and Matt asks him if he's seen the cat. He says that he hasn't.

In Mark Zuckerberg Eats Goats!, Matt asks Hugo if he's been taking pictures with his phone again. He says no, even though he clearly has.

In My Favourite Stuff from the 90's!, Matt talks about shows he liked in the 90's, and mentions Xena: Warrior Princess. He then says that he never watched it.

In 100th Video Spectacular! (MEGA COLLAB)!, Zak says that Matt helped kill John F. Kennedy. He then answers the question of how Matt could have done so, since he was born 22 years after the assassination: he's a time-travelling demon.

In Back to School-What NOT to Do!, Matt tells Eugene that he thinks that his clothes look good.

In The Stinger of A New Planet & Antimatter!, a fan commenter accuses Matt of putting subliminal messages in his video. He denies this, while messages show up on the screen for a fraction of a second, some of them telling the viewer to subscribe.

In Why Lying is OK!, Matt's friend asks him if he ate the ice cream. He gets shifty eyes, and says no. His friend doesn't buy it, and asks him why he's not looking at him. He says that he is looking at him.

In Why Lying is OK!, Matt tells the audience that if they don't subscribe, the world will end the following week.

Tony the Talking Clock sends the main characters on adventures through time, and as soon as this starts to cause them to age rapidly, he stands idly by and says "It's out of my hands, I'm only a clock!"

The clock also assures the main characters"Oh don't worry, I'm sure you'll be fine," even though his adventure causes the characters to experience what its like to rot to death. Possibly subverted as they *are* fine at the end of the video.

The butterfly in the third episode tries to tell a story about how everyone a story about "special ones" and how everyone has them, but his character, Michael, is called a freak and lives alone in a cave without any mention of a special one. The butterfly and his friends still try to insist the story was about special ones.

Special mention to the space-themed teacher in Episode 6 who claims “planets live inside the moon”.

Not Real Life

This kind of lie has never actually worked in Real Life. Therefore, what follows are all aversions and subversions.

When you call to a company line: Please listen carefully as our menu options have changed. Yeah, right.

In Las Vegas, independent stage producer David Saxe's Vegas! The Show, used these, with the website calling it "...the biggest stage production on the Strip in almost 20 years." It opened in 2010. Apparently a show with a cast of 40 and 11 musicians was performing on an Alternate Universe Strip where Cirque du Soleil's many shows don't exist (the first, Mystere, opened Christmas 1993)...much less various Broadway imports. And then there was a message to journalists that the first week's worth of shows were already sold out when the week in question was before the show opened. Oddly, once it was up and running it got fine reviews, so he was polishing a turd that wasn't.

The French Admiral Pierre-Charles Villeneuve, who is remembered as the loser at the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar, died the next year in a hotel in Rennes with six stab wounds in the left lung and one in the heart. The official verdict was suicide.

The lead hijacker of Flight 93 on 9/11, Ziad Jarrah, continuously said "This is your captain speaking" over the plane's PA system.

Iranian-Canadian reporter Zahra Kazemi was arrested in Iran for photographing a protest. She was later taken to a hospital (where she soon died) with bruises, broken bones, and other obvious traumatic injuries. The officers who brought her in told the doctors that she was suffering from "a digestive problem."

On July 3rd, 2012, someone from CERN accidentally put a video on their website talking about the discovery of the Higgs boson, 24 hours before the actual announcement was to be made. It was hastily pulled with an explanation that it was just one of a series of videos they'd made to cover all the possibilities, including not finding the Higgs. No one believed them.

In Sweden, those who own a television must pay a yearly fee. Sometimes, controllers visit people who have not paid, to check if they own one. What follows is a paraphrased urban legend of one such visit.

A controller is standing in the doorway of an apartment. A TV is turned on and clearly visible in the living room.

Controller: I see you have a TV there.

Resident: No, that's a washing machine.

Controller: Look, I can clearly see it's a TV.

Resident: I'm telling you, it's a washing machine.

Controller: Ugh, fine.

Knowing he'd need a witness to argue the case in court, the controller returns the next day with a colleague.

In the living room stands... an actual washing machine.

The British Broadcasting Corporation (for about forty or fifty years) has been telling people they have detector vans that can roll down a street and pick out houses where an unlicensed TV is in use. Oddly enough nobody has ever seen one of these vans, BBC logo or otherwise. The actual method is a combination of random checks on households with no licence and a reporting system with every TV seller in the country, even used. Licence shirkers who tell a seller their real address and then are surprised when the Beeb sends them a letter apparently exist in droves.

The Serbian national broadcaster attempted the same thing in the early '90s. Instead of using a van, they came up with a Swedish TV detector, which was merely an antenna glued to a Betamax video recorder.

The supply sergeants of an air cavalry unit in Vietnam ran a black market providing the men with army issue equipment for personal use. Whenever a helicopter was shot down, they explained away the missing inventory by listing the items as having been lost with that aircraft. At one inspection of the books from the higher ups, five tons of equipment was reported to have gone down with one shot down UH-1 Huey. It should be noted that the Huey has an overweight load of one ton.

Viktor Suvorov described in his book "Tales of a Liberator" how, during the invasion of Czechoslovakia, a group of Soviet soldiers accidentally burned a motorcycle and attempted to pass it off as loss to enemy action. The battalion commander spotted the lie immediately, but said he'd sign the protocol... so long as they'd add that the motorcycle had upon it a grenade launcher another company dropped into water. By the time the documents reached the front commander, the motorcycle also carried two fur coats, two night-vision devices, a rangefinder, a machinegun, a radio transmitter and a barrel of alcohol.

On a more tragic (and hillarious if you're a fan of dark and gallows humour) note, the entirety of the soviet trials against traitors, assasins, counter-revolutionaries, terrorists and whatnot during Stalin's era revolved around this. Basically Stalin started using the secret police to force oponents (real and, most often than not, potential or imaginary) or just people he didn't like or had fulfilled their purpose, to confess to outlandish crimes, and accuse someone else or some vague, ominous force, of being part of a conspiracy to destroy the Soviet Union. Then he would use that confession to accuse more people, who would then be forced to confess, and then THOSE confessions would be used against others. It reached a point where Stalin ordered a stop to the whole process because 1)they had almost completely vanquished any and all capable leaders and highly skilled officers, and 2) they ralised that continuing on this exponential rate required more manpower than the one they had to carry on the interrogations and sentences. So he promptly accused the head of the NKVD (Nikolai Yezhov) tasked with all this endless massacre of plotting to assasinate him and destroy the Soviet Union BY ELIMINATING ALL CAPABLE MEMBERS OF THE PARTY AND CREATING A BRUTAL SECRET POLICE FORCE ACCOUNTABLE TO NO-ONE (and also of being a pervert, having a massive porn stash and being gay, which was a recurring theme in all accusations), had him interrogated and killed. At the end of these proceedings Stalin preseted himself as not knowing the full scope of these atrocities and blamed all of his subordinates for misinterpreting his words. Then praised the marvellous result of erradicating all those people.

The [[ Constitution of the Soviet Union]], also redacted by order of Stalin, was this taken to eleven. It was made partly to appease those horrified of Stalin's brutality, so they would let their guard down while Stalin prepared the next batch of executions.

A World War II air ace, Lt-Commander Charles Lamb of the Royal Navy, was new, raw, and dumb enough to sign for a consignment of RAF flying jackets in 1939 which were way better than anything the Fleet Air Arm issued to Navy pilots. Over the next two years, as the original Navy pilots were transferred to all four corners of the globe taking the flying jackets with them, Lamb was plagued with demands to account for them, return them to store, or pay for all of them from his own pocket. Finally, in 1941, older and wiser, when his aircraft carrier was bombed into a blazing hulk in Malta's Grand Harbour, he was able to claim they had gone down with the ship. This accounted for thirty-odd Irving jackets to the satisfaction of the Naval bureaucracy.

In Mailed Fist, after first contact with the Germans in 1944, practically every officer in a British tank regiment claimed their issue watches (the very best kit available and each costing a month's pay) had been destroyed in action with the Germans. The CO commiserated for the loss, but begged his officers to show some restraint in their looting.

In the 2014 FIFA World Cup, Luis Suárez got in trouble in the Uruguay-Italy match for biting Giorgio Chiellini. The excuse he gave was something along the lines of "I fell and his body collided with my teeth". Read the full article here.note It was the third time an opponent's body had "collided with his teeth". Needless to say, FIFA didn't buy his excuse.

The trope of team management publicly announcing their confidence in the head coach/manager during a less-than-stellar season, soon followed by said individual being shown the door, is so common that a management announcement of support of a coach in such a situation is almost invariably called the "dreaded vote of confidence" on both sides of the Atlantic. And probably the Pacific as well.

In politics Angela Merkel is also fond of this, with several political commentators (both of the serious and humorous kind) saying her "fullest confidence" is basically a kiss of death to the career of anybody who is hit with it.

Military issued watches are very popular among watch collectors, and so are frequently reported as "lost" by servicemen. Particularly the extremely high quality aviator watches.

In 2014, during the Umbrella Revolution in Hong Kong, an anti-occupy central activist brought a Schweizer Messer to sewer the blockage, and his response to reporters was 'he loves eating fruits like durian blah blah blahnote The original Chinese version is "榴槤乜乜乜," which is more like "durian and so forth",' and the phrase "durian blah blah blah" ended up being viral. See this:

Anti-gathering resident: I bring my knife everywhere. I love eating fruits. I eat them in every country. Like durian blah blah blah.

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